HOLYOKE -- The Planning Board after a 90-minute public hearing Tuesday (Aug. 25) told Holyoke Medical Center to return Sept. 8 with a traffic study and other details related to a plan for a $12 million emergency room.

The hospital at 575 Beech St. needs a new emergency department because the existing one was built to handle 18,000 visits a year and has been drawing more than 45,000, officials said.

"The existing emergency room is untenable," said Spiros Hatiras, hospital president and chief executive officer.

No one opposed the project during the hearing at City Hall Annex. Nothing arose from planning officials that signaled whether they had majors problems with the project, aside from concerns raised about previously approved parking lots and requests for information about regular and ambulance traffic and details about signs.

The hospital is hoping for Planning Board approval of its site plan at the Sept. 8 continuation of the public hearing so construction can be completed on the foundation before winter, Hatiras said.

The plan is for the new, three-level emergency department to be ready by late 2016 or early 2017.

"This is what the community deserves," Hatiras said.

The hospital needs a new facility to replace what was described in its site plan review application as an undersized current emergency room that has an inefficient floor plan. The addition would be on the west side of the hospital in what is now a parking lot just north of the main entrance off Hospital Drive, which is accessed off Beech Street.

Local physician Andrew Levin said a new emergency department at Holyoke Medical Center has been necessary for years.

"We desperately need this," Levin said.

The 21,270-square-foot addition would have a mechanical area in the basement and two upper stories.The level above the basement would house the new emergency department and be designed to connect with the main hospital's second floor. The upper floor would be built as a shell for future expansion, the hospital's site plan review application said.

Board Chairwoman Mimi Panitch asked how much additional traffic hospital officials expected with a new emergency department. Hatiras said that with the federal government pushing for less emphasis on emergency room usage, projections are the new facility will have minimally more usage than now.

Board member Eileen Regan requested that the hospital submit a licensed traffic study of regular and ambulance visits to the facility for planners to consider.

Carl R. Cameron, hospital chief operating officer, said that would be done.

City Council President Kevin A. Jourdain, who attended the hearing, and Regan questioned officials about two parking areas being built on the hospital campus off Isabella Street under approvals the city granted in 2011. One parking lot will be for 39 spaces and the other will be for 27 spaces.

Those new lots will help in replacing the 86 parking spaces that would be lost if the city grants approval for the proposed emergency department to be built on what is now an 86-space parking lot.

The two parking lots were approved in relation to a kidney dialysis unit the hospital planned but never built in 2011, officials said.,

Regan questioned whether the hospital can include the new parking lots as part of the project for the emergency department.

"You can't just add them onto this project," Regan said.

"They think they can," Jourdain said from the audience.

Jeffrey Burkott, principal planner for the city, noted that the city zoning code specifies that the addition of parking lots is a permitted use of hospital property.

"So you're comfortable?" Regan asked Burkott.

"That's one of the past interpretations" of the zoning code, Burkott said.

Jourdain, while praising the hospital and supporting the emergency department project, questioned whether approval four years ago for two parking lots never built is sufficient to permit their construction now.

"Those, in my opinion, were not appropriately approved," Jourdain said.

As a result of the parking lots going four years without being built, neighbors were jolted by bulldozers taking down trees to construct the parking areas recently, he said.

"So they obviously were not too thrilled about that," Jourdain said.

He will file an order asking that the city adopt an ordinance to eliminate the parking-lot exemption hospitals have in the zoning code. The order would require that hospitals like other entities obtain a special permit from the City Council to build a parking lot, he said.

Hatiras said the hospital since the trees were knocked down has reached out to neighbors. The hospital will work with neighbors on the color of the parking lot fence, preferred shrubbery and lighting, he said.

"Respectfully, I hope nobody here feels the hospital tried to manipulate your position and run with something," Hatiras said.

Holyoke Medical Center is a 198-bed facility with 1,200 employees that treats people from Holyoke, Chicopee, South Hadley, Granby, Easthampton, Southampton, West Springfield and Belchertown, the hospital website said.

The hospital admits more than 7,500 patients a year and the emergency room gets more than 45,000 visits a year, the website said.

The medical staff includes 171 physicians and 96 consultants. Holyoke Medical Center is a nationally-accredited hospital, the website said.